Monthly Archives: January 2014

Friends, as many of you know, I am one of the Editors of the Atlas of Design, which is a book which NACIS publishes every two years. It’s a showcase of some of the best and most beautiful cartography around the world. We’ve recently opened submissions for the 2014 edition, and I very much hope you’ll think about submitting your work to us. Visit atlasofdesign.org/call for more details.

Also, I hope you’ll help us in spreading the word. The more people we reach, the better sample of maps we’ll have, and the better final volume we’ll produce. I would also especially like to ask for your help in reaching people outside the English-speaking world. We’d like this to be a book about great cartography throughout the globe. Our call for submissions and our submissions form are, thanks to some awesome volunteers, available in a dozen other languages. While our volunteers make it possible to communicate outside of English, we need help in reaching out to mapmakers who speak those languages. I and my fellow editors are based in the US, and our colleagues and professional contacts are primarily in the English-speaking world. If you can help us expand beyond that sphere by alerting your colleagues, posting in non-English forums, etc., we’d be much appreciative. We know it’s going to take time, but we’d like the Atlas of Design to represent the maps all of us make, no matter where we are.

As promised several months ago, I’ve finally put together some instructions on how to create shaded relief using Blender. I’ve created a 72-minute, six-part video series that walks you through the process (don’t worry; it doesn’t take that long to do it every time, just your first time). Please share it around! I’d love to see other people making use of this technique, and extending it beyond what I’ve done.

NOTE: Since I put together this video series, some of my colleagues have made some great contributions that you should be aware of. First off, Ryan Lash (@RRLash) has put together an awesome step-by-step explanation of everything that goes on in the videos, so that you don’t have to hunt around to find the step you missed: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/11HHMdKawdbXNkkxWdW82-HgHE2k3Tojg7P_X75ojb50/edit#gid=0. Second, check out the comments below. Morgan Hite has been using BlenderGIS to ease some of the issues with Blender not handling spatial data natively, and he’s put together a description of his basic workflow. I’m very happy that people are using and, more importantly, extending the material I’ve put together her.